An insurance policy clause -- and hospital cash payment requirements -- could prevent the liver transplant operation a Boca Raton-area mother needs to survive, her husband and physician said on Monday.

Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles wanted $100,000 or more in cash toward his wife`s surgery because his insurance company will not guarantee payment, James Traina says.

``It`s ridiculous,`` Traina says.

The insurance company says it will pay for the transplant, and any travel costs, but ``won`t put it in writing,`` he said. As a result, the hospitals are requiring the cash as security.

Traina is a real-estate broker and lives in a country club community west of Boca Raton, but he says the time needed to mortgage assets may not be swift enough to raise the cash.

He hopes the insurance company, NN Investors Life Insurance Co. of Hurst, Texas, will change its mind regarding the guarantee. But time is running out for his 39-year-old wife.

``If she continues to move as she is moving, in the wrong direction, I would say two to three weeks is all I`d give her,`` said her physician, Dr. Lennox Jeffers, an associate medical professor at the University of Miami.

An NN investors claims operator said the matter could not be discussed, that it was between the company and the policy holder.

Traina said his wife was fine until after New Year`s. About five weeks ago she began experiencing stomach pain, he said.

Traina said she was initially treated at Boca Raton Community Hospital before transferring to Cedars Medical Center in Miami, where the University of Miami`s Jackson Memorial has a wing devoted to liver ailments.

While hospitalized in Boca Raton, Ann Traina made a statement her husband said was misinterpreted.

Ann Traina allegedly said she experienced symptoms of liver failure four or five months before the NN policy went into effect last September, Jeffers said.

The statement was used to deactivate the catastrophic coverage clause in her policy, he said.

Traina says his wife vehemently denies the statement.

``Just because something was misconstrued, because she was in pain, she is going to die?`` Traina asks. The couple have three children, ages 22, 18, and 11.

Jeffers traces Ann Traina`s liver problems to what he described as a ``history of alcoholism.`` She has pneumonia, he said. And her liver failure is causing her kidneys to shut down. A new liver could revive the kidneys, he added.

Late last week, the urgency of the situation reached Ann Traina`s father in upstate New York. On Monday, Louis Vucci went to visit his daughter at Cedars Medical Center in Miami.

``If the fact the name Traina wasn`t on the door, I wouldn`t be able to recognize her,`` Vucci said.

An official overseeing transplants at Miami`s Jackson did not return calls.

Ron Wise, a spokesman for Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, said Traina`s insurance company indicated it would not cover the bill and that the family lacked the funds.